Evil is not as exotic as we sometimes think. As Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam” memorably shows, it’s usually deeply rooted in a specific place and time. In this case, New York City in the summer of 1977.
This is a terrific movie: jolting, savage, horrifically funny, nightmarishly exciting but also brainy and compassionate. What’s most impressive about the picture, though — along with its high-caliber acting and visuals — is the overpowering sense of time and place it creates.
We feel the past in this film, like a hot dangerous breeze. When the savage string of serial killings dubbed the “Son of Sam” murders swept through the city that summer, it was in a different world: not the pacified and polished Big Apple of Mayor Rudy Guiliani, but a vibrant, scary, sometimes awful place. It was the long summer of the sexual revolution, of disco, of record-breaking temperatures, of the blackout riots and Reggie Jackson’s New York Yankees, of the first “Star Wars” and, coming at year’s end, “Saturday Night Fever.” It was a time still awash in those ’60s obsessions, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, a time when life could become cheap, intoxicating and highly explosive.
“Summer of Sam” is about the effect on that New York City of the wave of nocturnal assaults on brunette young women or necking couples that were eventually attributed to a chubby, unnervingly smiley postal worker named David Berkowitz — who claimed the devil (and a barking dog) made him do it. But despite pre-release hoo-hah on the all-news, all-gab TV channels (where the movie has been condemned as tasteless exploitation by commentators who haven’t seen it), this is not the story of Berkowitz or his victims. What we see of the crime story are one murder and a few scenes with Berkowitz (Michael Badalucco) hallucinating in his private hell.
Instead, much like Lee’s great, explosive 1989 “Do the Right Thing,” it’s a portrait of a community stewing in oppressive heat and gripped and ripped by intolerance, fear and violence. Lee’s subject is bigotry, but not against his usual core group, the African-American community, which is barely on screen here.
The film’s focal point is an Italian-American section of Brooklyn, where a kind of lynch hysteria builds among a bunch of swaggering, good-time toughs who look related to Pizzeria owner Sal’s two sons in “Do the Right Thing.” The two main guys are Vinny (John Leguizamo), a local disco star and compulsive serial seducer, and his longtime buddy Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who left the old neighborhood to turn mohawked, spike-haired punk rocker. Around them are their homies, headed by kingpin Joey T (Michael Rispoli). And beside them are their women, Ritchie’s tough buddy Ruby (Jennifer Esposito) and Vinny’s “angel” wife and disco partner Dionna (Mira Sorvino) — on whom he cheats constantly.
Why is Lee attracted to this material, which came to him via an original script by actor-writers Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli? Certainly because of its setting — which he expands to include snapshots and sound-bites throughout ’77 New York — but also because of its central idea: that tight-knit communities often overstress or become terrified of differences, let fear and frustration boil into rage.
The setup is simple. Gradually and crazily, Vinny’s gang comes to believe Ritchie is Son of Sam, not because they have any solid or sensible evidence — other than Ritchie’s vague resemblance to the “Sam” police sketch — but because he’s a cultural outsider, and they interpret all differences as deviance. Anxiety, prejudice and sexual tension all contribute to the mounting moral meltdown and, as he has often done before, Lee excels at revealing flaws and breathing life into his diverse characters.
Lee’s last two movies, “He Got Game” and this, have much more melodrama than usual for him. But he’s not trying to titillate the audience; he’s constructing morality plays in the classic American movie mold.
He still excels at portraying anger, though, and at assembling and directing powerful ensembles. This cast is one of the best he’s recruited. Leguizamo, a killer actor, puts so much fragility and self-doubt into hairdresser Vinny that we understand his infidelity. Sorvino, Brody and Esposito are equally intense.
And Lee’s period sense and use of music are still strong, too. Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way” is used as effectively as it was in 1977’s “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.” But what makes “Summer of Sam” really cook are the hot visuals, the feel of the times and the ensemble — including Anthony LaPaglia as the neighborhood guy turned homicide cop and Ben Gazzara as a local Mafioso who (in an echo of “M”) gets involved in the manhunt.
There’s a slashing, deliberately lurid look and feel to “Summer of Sam” — with its hot reds and yellows, its smoky, snaky tension. Most of all, we’re held by great moviemaking and powerful emotions. At the last Cannes Film Festival, “Summer of Sam” received (and deserved) one of the fest’s longest, loudest ovations — not because it callously exploits violence and a terrible past but because it coolly exposes horror’s roots while digging out the why.
”SUMMER OF SAM”
(star) (star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Spike Lee; written by Victor Colicchio, Michael Imperioli, Lee; photographed by Ellen Kuras; edited by Barry Alexander Brown; production designed by Therese DePrez; music by Terence Blanchard; produced by Jon Kilik. A Touchstone Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:16. MPAA rating: R (language, sensuality, nudity, violence).
THE CAST
Vinny ………………… John Leguizamo
Ritchie ………………. Adrien Brody
Dionna ……………….. Mira Sorvino
Ruby …………………. Jennifer Esposito
Detective Petrocelli …… Anthony LaPaglia
Gloria ……………….. Bebe Neuwirth
Luigi ………………… Ben Gazzara
Son of Sam ……………. Michael Badalucco
